The Corner Gym

Once upon a time I tried taking a Zumba class. I’m pretty sure it scarred me for life. You see, I lack the basic skills necessary to do Zumba – namely coordination and the ability to follow any directions that involve the words “left” or “right”.

In truth, I hate exercise. Don’t get me wrong, I love to play outside. I could hike or bike for miles and paddle for hours. But the minute you call it exercise, I’m out. Angie, on the other hand, has an hour long workout routine using resistance bands that she does every weekday morning. Every. Single. Morning. Just watching her wears me out.

Amazon’s $9 Door Anchor

A few weeks ago, Angie came to me with a dilemma. She had nowhere to anchor the band so that she could do some sort of upper body toning thing. My suggestion was to skip it but since she looked at me so sadly, I looked online to see how other folks were anchoring their bands. Lo and behold, Amazon had a nifty piece of nylon with what looked like a roll of black tape on the end that would fit the bill. It was $9.

Now you might say, it’s just $9. What’s that in comparison to a gym membership? Generally, I’d agree…especially since our local recreation center charges nearly $400 per year for a family membership. But when your goal is to live on 50% of your income, $9 is 3 gallons of milk, 9 loaves of bread, or a whole lot of vegetable seeds for that future garden. So what was I to do?

I made one of those nifty nylon things myself…and according to the fitness guru, it works great! I used the strap off of an old duffel bag, a carabiner clip, and a few stitches on the sewing machine to hold it all together.

Now that I’ve solved Angie’s workout problem, I have to address one of my own. My mom wants us to start a Wednesday Walking Club. That sounds an awful lot like exercise to me. Oh mom, couldn’t you have just said we were going to the park??